Irenebrination: Notes on Architecture, Art, Fashion, Fashion Law, Science & Technology: June 2016

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Turning the Ordinary into the Extraordinary: "Judy Blame - Never Again" @ The ICA, London

A young man leans against a wooden structure on the banks of the River Thames. His gaze is on the horizon and he's got his back to the camera. He's wearing a deconstructed hopsack linen piece and oxblood shoes; a necktie covered with buttons and random objects hangs around his back.

Shot by Robyn Beeche, this image - dubbed "Father Thames" - perfectly summarises the spirit of the early '80s in London, with the young man looking avant-garde in an assemblage of clothes and accessories made with simple fabrics and materials.

If this image represents the quintessential spirit of London, so does accessory designer, stylist, art director and fashion consultant Judy Blame. So it seems very apt for him to get his first major solo exhibition at the ICA - "Judy Blame: Never Again", curated by Matt Williams.

Why we had to wait such a long time for this event? Well, Blame has been many things in his career, he escapes definitions and can't be piogeonholed in one field or profession and organising an event about him may be therefore a bit tricky.

Blame left Devonshire at 17, spent a week in London, then settled down in Manchester. He spent here for a couple of years, got acclimatised to the urban environment, and then headed back to London.

He first started producing jewellery to distinguish himself within the London club scene in the early '80s. Though low on resources, he was definitely high on resourcefulness: his DIY approach prompted him to incorporate the most bizarre bits and pieces in his designs such as lost and found objects he at times spotted while mudlarking on the banks of the Thames.

While the main point of these adornments featuring safety pins, buttons, badges, pearls, corroded bottle tops, bottle openers, keys and cutlery, plastic bags and toy soldiers was standing out from the crowd, once reassembled these mass produced elements turned from the debris of a society based on waste and suffering from industrial and economic decline into richly textured layered tokens shaping an almost tribal identity and a new and cool youth culture.

Around this period of time, Blame met and influenced creative minds such as Boy George, Derek Jarman, Anthony Price, John Maybury and Leigh Bowery. In his autobiography, Straight, Boy George wrote that Blame would arrive with a bag of safety pins and a cork and would create "a fashion revolution". Indeed the pieces for performers à la Boy George in which Blame turned the ordinary into the extraordinary inspired fans who imitated them, starting new trends.

In 1985 Blame helped John Moore to establish The House of Beauty and Culture in Dalston, a craft collective of like-minded artists and designers including Fiona Skinner, Dave Baby, Fiona Bowen, John Flett, Peter Foster, Alan Macdonald & Fritz Solomon (furniture making duo Fric & Frack), Richard Torry and Christopher Nemeth.

The collective experience led Blame later on in his life to become a consultant and collaborate with various labels and designers including John Galliano, Rifat Ozbek, Rei Kawakubo at Comme des Garçons, Gareth Pugh, Marc Jacobs and Kim Jones at Louis Vuitton.

Fashion and music represented the main fields in which Blame has worked: meeting the late stylist Ray Petri (behind the Buffalo fashion collective) led to key collaborations with Neneh Cherry (he styled her iconically dynamic and sporty look for her performance of "Buffalo Stance" on Top of the Pops in 1988, when she was heavily pregnant).

But Blame also produced fashion editorials with photographers Mark Lebon, Mark Mattock, Jean Baptiste Mondino and Juergen Teller for publications such as i-D, and The Face, acting as art director, image maker and consultant for Björk and Massive Attack among the others.

Blame's "composite" identity may have turned the ICA exhibition into a chaotic affair, instead it's a concise space dominated by the make-do-and-mend spirit of punk and featuring a variety of objects - from clothes and jewellery (obviously there are piles of buttons and keys...) to neo-Dada collages, fashion editorials (with some pictures shot by Beeche) and sketchbooks.

Another show - "Artistic Differences" - at the ICA complements this space and celebrates Blame's collaborative side, bringing together artists and designers with whom he has worked throughout his career - from Charles Atlas (check out the 1987 film "Hail the New Puritan") and Jake and Dinos Chapman to Derek Jarman, Jim Lambie, Mark Lebon, Linder, John Maybury, Jamie Reid, Peter Saville, Juergen Teller, Nicola Tyson (see the 1983 film "Judy Blame on Southwark Bridge") and Tim Noble & Sue Webster.

While "Judy Blame: Never Again" is definitely not a retrospective, it is a way to stop and take stock, maybe thinking about all the times we believe we are creating our own individual styles, while we are actually being twisted and manipulated by the fashion industry and essentially told to conform rather than encouraged to be different.

So the ICA event - accompanied by a limited edition zine compiled by Judy Blame that you can pick up at the venue and by a wonderful interview with Blame himself in conersation with ICA Executive Director Gregor Muir (check out the youtube.com video at the end of this post) - should be taken as an opportunity to think about materials, creativity and images (for Blame a diamond is never better than a safety pin, and pay attention to that chain hanging from one necklace - it's actually a toilet chain...), and learn more about the power of genuine creative collaborations, something that may help visitors finding the strength needed to oppose the negative energies of the Brexit.

"Judy Blame: Never Again", The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH, UK, until 4th September 2016.

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The Space Age Silhouette, Revamped: Courrèges Resort 2017

Concise, graphic, geometrical and sculptural – your mind automatically conjures up these adjectives upon seeing images of Courrèges' first Resort collection by Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant (previously of design duo Coperni Femme).

There is actually also another definition that could be added to this list – architectural. Meyer and Vaillant shifted the attention on the clothes construction by photographing the pieces hanging in the maison's factory in Pau, at the foot of the Pyrenees, in Southwest France.

The modernist building was designed by the late André Courrèges in 1972 - at the time known "Le Corbusier of Couture" (he was a civil engineer and architect apart form being a fashion designer) - and was conceived in collaboration with local architects. The main idea for the all-white building was that it had to look like and upside-down bridge in the countryside. The factory was re-acquired and restore by Jacques Bungert and Frédéric Torloting, after they bought the brand from André Courrèges and his wife Coqueline.

As a whole the collection could be defined compact and minimal, based on a limited palette revolving around black and white (with some sparks of silver) rather than pop colours, and featuring utility pants, efficiently sporty miniskirts, mini-dresses, macs and textured vinyl jackets that looked as if they were made of leather. In a nutshel, the main elements forming the glossary Courrèges developed after he left his job as assistant to Cristóbal Balenciaga were there.

A sleeveless pinstripe top with rounded armholes looked like a wearable exercise in fluid geometries of the kind that may flatter a woman's body rather than vilifying it. The rounded pattern characterising this piece also replicated the curved roof of the Pau factory, in the same way a white shirt and a pair of leather white and silver boots seemed to evoke in their structures and shapes some of the architectural features of the building.

While we may not know for sure if the architectural link was intentional or if it may have casually happened when the designers visited the factory to work on the prototypes for this collection, one thing is certain, Meyer and Vaillant are keeping on exploring the brand's archives stored in the headquarters on the rue François Premier in Paris' 8th Arrondissement, trying at the same time to offer coherent and tightly edited collections to new and old fans of the label.

Yet, exploring the archives doesn't mean for the duo to forget about modern technology: fabric was indeed seamlessly welded and incorporated into the rubber macs and the miniskirts; the motifs similar to stitching on a white shirt were instead created by another technique developed with the help of a computer-assisted machine called Nucleus; the double-layered black shorts were made with 3-D-printed polyurethane and a silver mini-skirt and coat were covered with vinyl elements forming three-dimensional floral motifs secured by an innovative solution - hundreds of snaps and studs.

Though this may not be a wardrobe for cosmonauts from the '60s, it opens new possibilities for modern tech-heads. Guess Courrèges would have approved.

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Silhouette of Contention: Balenciaga Men's S/S 2017

A new silhouette to enthuse about: that's what fashion critics got when last week Balenciaga's first menswear collection by Georgian-born Demna Gvasalia - of fashion cult collective Vêtements - opened menswear fashion week in Paris. Unfortunately, there wasn't much else to spot after that (in the collection and during menswear fashion week...). But let's go back to Balenciaga.

Exaggeration was the keyword behind Balenciaga's designs: jackets were at first characterised by an extremely wide shoulder line in the style of Frankestein's monster circa 1931; then the shoulder line became painfully narrow. There were also blazers matched with tight bermudas accessorised with Nazi knee-high boots, and high-waist pants and shirts that were cropped and finished with an elastic bottom. Skater chains attached to the waistband, caps, voluminous trousers, cropped tailored bombers and a blue or yellow leather bag derived from the classic Ikea's Frakta carrier bag were directly borrowed from the Vêtements-meets-Margiela glossary.

The collection finished with an ecclesiastical note: a lace altar-boy cassock peeked from beneath a suit, liturgical shades of red and purple were applied to glam suits, a priest's soutane was reduced to a disturbing sleeveless vest and priest's stoles were turned into scarves. The liturgical silks actully came from suppliers to the Vatican (but to save money, look for ecclesiastic accessories on second hand market stalls/at antique markets in Italy and you'll get the same look for a fraction of the price).

The starting point for this collection was an unfinished coat spotted in the Balenciaga archive and made by Cristóbal himself, this reference emerged in one detail: fitting cards of the kind usually employed for the measurements of clients of bespoke tailored pieces, casually inserted in the pockets of the jackets. Show notes mentioned indeed "the tradition of bespoke tailoring" and a will to "define and assert new men's silhouettes through tailoring."

Though the catwalk show took place on the rooftop of a Jesuit school in Paris and there were these ecclesiastical references, Gvasalia wasn't thinking about Balenciaga's Catholicism or his passion for Zurbarán's paintings of saints. The only connection with religion and this collection was maybe the fact that fashion is becoming more and more a cult for attitude crazed devotees worshipping at the altar of a trend or a designer.

As a whole the collection was a remix of Martin Margiela, David Byrne's giant gray suit from the Talking Heads' 1984 live movie Stop Making Sense with the chasubles and stoles (and voluminous silhouettes) of ecclesiastical garments in Fellini's Roma. In a nutshell, the radically new reeked of the ridiculously old.

While Balenciaga was into art and architecture, it takes courage to say that this collection was about architecture. The latter should provide solutions to fashion, rather than making the wearer look ridiculous. Indeed you don't have to look like a massive building (and get stuck in doorframes as you used to do in 1983...) to prove you're wearing something "architectural".

Yes, it was a break from Alexander Wang's (the previous designer at Balenciaga) vision, but we should all try and be less enthusiastic, and avoid screaming about the umpteenth fashion genius as soon as something "unusual" hits the runway. This is indeed fashion for a restricted number of wealthy people who love cults and feel comfortable going around looking like a massive fridge or an emaciated vampire (apparently the collection will go into production as it is, so these weren't just showpieces).

Yet, there are reasons to be happy about all this: if you have embarrassedly stored in your wardrobe one of those suits/jackets or even trench coats with tremendously wide shoulders from 1983-84 you can finally wear it and join the cult, as you wait for the next Vêtements collection.

Scheduled on Sunday as part of Couture Fashion Week in Paris, the collection will be a massive collaboration with garments created together with a long list of brands, including Levi's, Hanes, Manolo Blahnik, Juicy Couture, Carhartt, Eastpak, Canada Goose, Lucchese, Mackintosh, Dr. Martens, Reebok, Church's, Alpha Industries, Champion, Kawasaki, Schott, Comme des Garçons and Brioni. As they say, there's safety in numbers.

As for Gvasalia, rather than a genius or the fashion saviour we have all been expecting (ah, if only we could stop prematurely calling people geniuses and then destroying them in six to nine months…), he is a necessity, not fashion-wise but critic-wise: he is indeed an excuse to write about something happening in an otherwise moribund fashion industry, something or rather someone desperately needed on the Fashion Titanic.

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Life's a Beach: Thom Browne Men's S/S 2017

The positive vibes that Thom Browne injected in his Resort 2017 collection earlier on in June extended onto his S/S 2017 menswear collection showcased yesterday afternoon in Paris.

Before the show started there was actually a sad moment when the designer asked from the backstage to remember Bill Cunningham, the legendary New York Times photographer who died on Saturday.

Then the spectacle started with a model in a black cropped suit, a fin on his back and a leather shark mask who, on the theme for Steven Spielberg's Jaws, started circling the set, consisting in a fake beach of glittering black sand and a gray palm tree.

Models in gigantic gray suits symbolized maybe a shark attack, but soon they unzipped the cumbersome onesies as if they were wetsuits to reveal short suits, tailcoats, and trench coats in summery shades.

At times the garments were covered in embroideries of three-dimensional flowers, sharks, surfboards and islands or were highlighted by (slightly Courrèges-que) profiles in green, red and yellow; in other cases the jackets came in grass green mink, tweed and raffia.

One pair of trousers had bits and pieces missing, a zigzagging hemline was left in their place almost to symbolize that the model had an encounter with the sharks, but had miraculously managed to escape.

Then models dressed as seagulls and parrots joined the spectacle in suits covered in white or multi-coloured feathers and beaked Stephen Jones headdresses and masks.

There was another trick here, though, revealed when the models wearing the cropped suits unzipped the designs once again in a cartoonish way to reveal they were actually trompe l'oeil "skins" hiding beneath vintage looking knitted bathing suits in vibrantly coloured floral motifs (with matching socks and shoes).

Browne was indeed trying to replicate the idea behind a wetsuit, applying it to an entire wardrobe and therefore fusing more than three or four garments into one.

The swimming suits were accessorized with custom-made Thom Browne surfboards that will also be on sale come next season (the matching surfboard is becoming a bit of a trend for fashion designers producing swimwear, see also Cynthia Rowley).

It was not impossible to try and make sense of all the laughable shenanigans and showmanship as the narration with the black clad shark cruising the set may have pointed towards the greed currently ruling the world.

Yet again maybe it was just about fun, after all there was the same degree of silliness here that also characterized the Resort 2017 collection with its impractical pumps with heels shaped like spouting whales, anchors and boats, and, who knows, maybe the palette for the menswear designs with those cocktail shades of peach, green and lime was borrowed, like the Resort palette, from the saturated mid-century Americana images the designer found in magazines such as Time or Life.

As the Beach Boys played on, you realised this was bizarre, colourful and surreal, but maybe it was also a way to lift the morale after a bland menswear week shaken by the Brexit results.

Yes, West Coast fantasia and California Dreamin' may not be the answers to the Brexit and the chaos that followed its announcement, but it provided a moment of madness and half an hour of distraction to the fatigued and worried fashion crowds thinking about how their jobs may be affected in a Europe that seems to be shrinking more and more like a Thom Browne suit.

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He Who Seeks Beauty Will Find It: Bill Cunningham, New York Times Photographer, Humble Legend (1929-2016)

"The best fashion show is definitely on the street - always has been and always will be," states New York Times reporter and photographer Bill Cunningham at the very beginning of the documentary that in 2010 Richard Press dedicated to him.

The streets of New York and the ordinary people or the rare birds of paradise cruising them will definitely miss this unique character, a humble man with an encouraging smile, a childish glee, a genuine passion for fashion and a wonderful eye for details. Bill Cunningham died yesterday in Manhattan, after having been recently hospitalized for a stroke. He was 87.

Born in March 1929, William J. Cunningham moved to New York in the late '40s where he first worked in advertising. He then focused on millinery, making whimsical hats under the name "William J" (to avoid embarrassment to his conservative Bostonian family…).

He closed his business when he was drafted and, after serving in the U.S. Army, he returned to New York and started writing for the Chicago Tribune. While working at the Tribune, shooting wonderful fashion reportages for Details magazine (in which he visually juxtaposed art and fashion with the skills of a precise historian) and contributing to Women's Wear Daily, he began taking photographs of fashion on the streets of New York.

A chance photograph of Greta Garbo published in a group of pictures in the Times in December 1978 spawned a regular column.

In more recent times, his column "On the Street" started including the photographer's audio commentary. Always sounding enthusiastic and happy, Cunningham's voice usually made you smile and find a new reason to get passionate about fashion.

Two years ago an exhibition at the New York Historical Society entitled "Façades" (a title inspired by his 1978 eponymous book) focused on Cunningham's pictures from 1968-1976.

For this project he captured women in period costumes posing against historical or modern buildings in New York, among them also the late fellow photographer Editta Sherman, who lived like him in the Carnegie Hall building.

Every day, clad in a blue worker's jacket, Cunningham cycled around the streets of New York taking pictures of wealthy fashionistas or ordinary passers-by with a unique twist in their styles and documented their attires, spotting trends (for his "On the Street" column), or of people at society parties (only fundraisers for charitable and philanthropic causes; for his "Evening Hours" column) with an energy, passion, optimism and enthusiasm that the new generation of street photographers - with huge and powerful digital cameras but often with very little soul - desperately lacks.

Cunningham became a legend, keeping his integrity: he never accepted food (not even a glass of water) at the society parties he went to (to avoid compromising and preserve his objectivity) and some of his quotes about money should be the mottos of those supposedly objective critics, journalists and bloggers shipped all over the world by fashion companies to report about their Cruise collections ("Money's the cheapest thing. Liberty and freedom is the most expensive"; "Once people own you, they can tell you what to do. So don't let 'em" and "If you don't take money, they can't tell you what to do, kid!").

He even refused to do a retrospective of his pictures at the Met Museum thinking that would have been a diversion and he never watched Press's documentary about him.

Cunningham received the L'Ordre National des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture in 2008 and the Carnegie Hall Medal of Excellence in 2012.

When he received the former he stated: "I'm not interested in celebrities with their free dresses. Look at the clothes, the cut, the lines, the colours - that's everything. It's the clothes. Not the celebrity and not the spectacle."

The photographer recently made a brief appearance in Andrew Rossi's "The First Monday in May": in the documentary he stops to chat with Andrew Bolton on the opening night of "China: Through the Looking Glass" at the Met, and reminds him of Diana Vreeland's contribution to the Costume Institute, "When you think how they allowed you this, poor Mrs Vreeland, they killed her with the exhibition, keeping it downstairs".

Cunningham had a contagiously amazing joie de vivre and considered invisibility as a gift.

In a fashion world constantly focused on money and not much else, he chose to focus on how people use clothes to express their personal style: in what he called "the age of the cookie cutter sameness", he looked indeed for daring and rare individuals who didn't looked as if they had been stamped out of ten million other people.

When he accepted the Ordre National des Arts et des Lettres in France, Cunningham closed his speech with a wonderful sentence - "He who seeks beauty will find it". His life has been a great lesson, a constant search for beauty, honesty and lack of pretense: if there is anything as oxymoronic as a humble legend, he was definitely one and will be truly and greatly missed.

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Couture Techniques in a Colour-Coded Opera: Le Nozze di Figaro @ The 59th Spoleto Festival

Many sectors will be hit hard by the Brexit (if it really happens…), but the creative and performing arts may be hit even harder if you consider the European funds injected into festival and events, or the international artists working for different companies in the UK or the British performers collaborating with companies in Europe.

So, thinking about the consequences that the Brexit may have on theatre, ballet and opera, let's focus on a performance that yesterday evening opened the Spoleto Festival in Italy, Mozart's "Nozze di Figaro" (Marriage of Figaro).

Based on stage comedy La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro ("The Mad Day, or The Marriage of Figaro") by Pierre Beaumarchais, this opera buffa composed in 1786 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with an Italian libretto written by Lorenzo Da Ponte was premiered in May of the same year at the Burgtheater, Vienna.

The story revolves around a day of genuine madness in the palace of Count Almaviva and follows his servants Figaro and Susanna as they try to get married fooling their employer who is trying to seduce Susanna.

Directed by Giorgio Ferrara and with James Conlon as conductor, the opera boasted a special team - set designer Dante Ferretti, set decorator Francesca Lo Schiavo, and costume designer Maurizio Galante.

Ferretti and Lo Schiavo opted for colour-coded sets that gave a surreally fantastic mood to the opera: each act was characterized by different shades - pink and green; yellow and pink; red and blue.

While most elements such as the curtains were painted, Lo Schiavo furnished the scene with basic pieces including a bed, chairs and benches.

Galante created instead 55 costumes inspired by the 1700s that retained a fantastic element: the colours picked for the fabrics and the intricately braided wigs matched indeed with the vivid shades of the scenes.

Yet the costumes were a feast for the eye not just for the wonderful palette including vivid reds, emerald greens and multiple shades of canary yellows, but also for the techniques employed.

Drawing from his architectural studies, Galante employed indeed techniques such as pleating and folding to sculpt the fabrics, borrowing tricks like layering different fabrics one upon the other or intertwining ribbons on a corset from Haute Couture, to create visually striking silhouettes that could easily be appreciated also from members of the audience sitting far away from the stage.

These textile sculptures – rather than mere costumes – highlighted the movements and gestures of the performers.

Though all the costumes seemed fun to look at, among the highlights there were Susanna's pleated gown, the yellow gown donned by the Countess, Cherubino's dynamic glammed up suits in greens and pinks and details such as the surreally exaggerated cuffs for the Count's costumes. A bonus note: historical Italian tailoring house Sartoria Farani made the costumes for this opera.

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Brexit and The Victory of Petty Parochialism: Britain Chooses to Leave the EU, Closing the Door to Multiculturalism

It's a bad time for fashion weeks and fashion news: Milan menswear closed a couple of days ago, Paris menswear is on (while Resort lookbooks keep on being released…), Reuters revealed yesterday that, after Haute Couture Week, Dior will announce the appointment of Maria Grazia Chiuri (one half of the Valentino team with Pier Paolo Piccioli) as its new Creative Director (a piece of news that should lift the spirits in Italy as Chiuri would be the second Italian Creative Director for the French maison, 17 years after Gianfranco Ferré, and the first woman to head it).

Yet this morning fashion reviews are secondary news as the focus is definitely on the results of the Brexit, the nickname for the referendum about Britain's departure from the European Union. Britain joined the European Economic Community (the predecessor of the European Union) in 1973 and two years later in a referendum more than 67% of voters chose to remain. Yesterday instead the majority of the electorate (52%) voted to leave the Union. This morning Prime Minister David Cameron, a soft Eurosceptic who supported the "Remain" campaign, announced his decision to stand down from office and the pound slumped to the lowest level in 30 years.

Though not all British fashion designers clearly manifested their intentions of voting to "Leave" or "Remain", just ten days ago, an e-survey by the British Fashion Council showed that most of them wanted to keep on being part of the European Union.

Besides, during London Collections: Men, Sibling's Cozette McCreery and Sid Bryan, Lou Dalton, Christopher Raeburn, and Patrick Grant of E. Tautz all wore "In" T-shirts when they took their bows, showing their support for the "Remain" campaign.

Daniel W. Fletcher also did an off-schedule show/demonstration with friends, family and models holding signs with slogans such as "Stay" and "Better Together" ("Stay" track tops, caps, and tees are part of Fletcher's S/S 2017 collection, though they may not be "in" anymore come next season - excuse the pun), and at Central Saint Martins B.A. collections, student Philip Ellis also addressed the issue covering his punk garments with EU flag armbands and badges reading "stay".

Days before the London menswear event Vivienne Westwood posted on her Instagram account a photo of herself wearing a T-shirt urging everyone to register to vote, while Christopher Bailey of Burberry signed a collective letter with other business leaders that was published on the opinion page of The Times of London in February.

When the vote was announced, design collective Common Market relaunched instead a sweater originally designed by a Scottish mill in 1975 for Margaret Thatcher. The jumper featured the flags of the nine countries (Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, West Germany, Ireland, Denmark, and the United Kingdom ) that made up the common market at the time; though she wasn't really pro-Europe, Thatcher wore it in support of the European trade agreement.

Before the referendum took place, a Creative Industries Federation Survey aslo showed that more than 96% of respondents supported the move to remain. Such results are perfectly understandable: if you work in a creative venture you know how important it is to have an open mind and collaborate together with people from different backgrounds and cultures; if you're a fashion designer, you know that there are benefits when you produce or manufacture a collection in a European country where there may have specialized companies or ateliers.

For decades students have benefited from European exchange programmes, opening new paths to other people who came after them (I was an early Erasmus student myself and paved the way for more Italians to go and study Scottish Literature at Glasgow University).

Yet it seemed the Europhobes' emphasis about losing control over immigration flows, fear, narrow mindedness or simple lack of knowledge about more practical aspects prevailed: some of the people who voted "Leave" said they felt dominated by EU laws, but EU laws also regulate trade, patent and copyright issues, in a nutshell they allow certain exchanges between European countries that generate money and jobs. And the European Union may have lost control over immigration flows, but Italy has been screaming emergency for years as the Mediterranean turned into a graveyard where migrants drowned every day, but most countries - the UK included - never cared until the situation became worse.

Cameron stated he will not immediately instigate Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon that formally notifies a country's intention to withdraw from the Union starting a two-year negotiation with the EU to decide the terms of the leave. But there are complex issues to take care of. How will the UK regulate import and exports? Will companies have to pay customs? If yes, rather than doing business with the UK some countries may decide to go elsewhere inside the European Union. Or is this the end of free trade for them? And what about Internet shopping?

What about military issues and operations? What will happen to border control (oh well, maybe people who voted "Leave" are not travellers, so they don't have a clue about longer border controls for non-EU residents…)? Will EU citizens have the right to live and work freely in Britain, and vice versa?

What about exchange programmes between universities? And uni fees? Will European students be considered as "overseas students" to make sure they pay higher fees?

What happens to all the people from the EU (and from other countries…) working in the UK? (No, I'm not just thinking about multicultural teams working for fashion designers, but doctors working for the National Health Service as well and many others in key roles). Will they all have to get visas (in which case it will be easier to move somewhere else entire British companies with teams of workers from other countries; fashion-wise don't forget that some of the most hyped up fashion designer living, working and showing their collections in the UK are not British)?

What about means of transports such as low cost airlines based in the UK but mainly flying to EU airports, tax-wise what will happen to them and to the airports where they land?

Should the UK be entitled to take part in strictly "European" events now? And what about UK companies receiving EU funds or projects launched in the UK in collaboration with other European countries that get EU grants? And tenders won by UK companies in other European countries?

As you see, some of these issues are delicate matters and may have damaging (and curently unclear...) implications and consequences (though Cameron stated there will be "no immediate changes" for the EU citizens working in the UK and the British living abroad). In a way this is a sad moment in history since it represents a victory for Nazi extremist Europhobes à la Nigel Farage and maniacs like Boris Johnson, and it is a shame that this referendum even left a victim behind, Labour MP Jo Cox, shot by a British Nazi sympathizer.

Looks like the debate that has divided friends, families and parties in the last few weeks has also widened the gap between British citizens and Europeans, showing that in 2016 there is still place for racism, nationalism, parochialism and provincialism.

Do you want to get out of Europe? Then get out also from the European Championships now and forget about your beloved Eurovision Song Contest. No man's an island, yes, that's true, but this basic statement is somehow a difficult concept to grasp for narrow minded people who claim they have never benefited from multiculturalism, even when that same multiculturalism allows them to eat foreign delicacies, dress in international brands, read another language and make money and business with another country.

The hilarity of it all? Farage & Co are now technically aliens in the EU, "extra-communitarian" people, "Europe's Others", so they will have to start a campaign against themselves now. The Brexit trends, fashion-wise? Well, Gucci's Resort 2017 collection wth its punkish theme filtered through granny style and Union Jack jumpers and loafers will (sadly) go down a storm with the "Leave" supporters.

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Book Alert: Guardians of the Louvre by Jirô Taniguchi (NBM Publishing)

After a group trip to Europe for a comic festival, mangaka Jirô Taniguchi stops in Paris, hoping to visit the museums of the capital. Struck by an intense fever, he is instead confined him to his hotel room and, when he finally feels better, he decides to spend the remaining days of his holiday visiting the Louvre.

This is more or less the plot behind the latest graphic novel - Guardians of the Louvre (NBM Publishing) - commissioned by the Louvre to prominent artists (The Museum Vaults by Marc-Antoine Mathieu; On the Odd Hours by Eric Liberge; The Sky Over the Louvre by Jean-Claude Carrière and Bernard Yslaire; An Enchantment by Christian Durieux; Glacial Period by Nicolas De Crécy; Rohan at the Louvre by Hirohiko Araki; Phantoms of the Louvre by Enki Bilal, and Cruising Through the Louvre by David Prudhomme).

Yet there is more than just the Louvre in these pages: as Taniguchi joins the anonymous crowds of tourists visiting the museum, something mysterious happens to him. While walking around the lower ground floor of the Denon Wing he meets the Winged Victory of Samothrace, represented by an ethereal vision of a woman in a pink costume.

Victory reveals him the museum is protected by very special guardians, the souls of the artworks preserved here. The woman represents a Virgil-like figure, while Taniguchi is a sort of reinvented Dante Alighieri, but, rather than descending to Hell to rediscover Paradise, Victory escorts Taniguchi in a journey through time and space, first allowing him to see the most touristy spots in the Louvre such as the gallery where the Mona Lisa is displayed, then taking him to the labyrinth-like bowels of the museum to show him the air conditioning system that preserves the artworks.

The journey quickly turns into a hallucinatory trip through art: Taniguchi enters the parallel world of "Recollection of Mortefontaine" by painter Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, admired in Japan after 1897, and talks with a Japanese artist who was deeply inspired by him, Asai Chū.

Taniguchi highlights this connection between Japanese and French art, almost to remind his readers that his style, drawings and use of colour, place him in this tradition (in a way this book is also a discovery of the artists and works that inspired Taniguchi and this is the main reason why this volume is more personal than previous books about the Louvre).

From the Louvre, Taniguchi is transported to the Takanodai Gallery in the Ueno district of Tokyo where he admires Asai's western style paintings, and listens to Japanese novelist Natsume Sōseki analysing them; then he moves on, reaching Auvers-sur-Oise where he meets Vincent Van Gogh, witnesses some of his most famous paintings in progress and visits Daubigny's beautiful home study.

Some of the most interesting pages of the graphic novel tell a story from 1939: before the Nazi entered Paris, artworks were packed and taken away. The operations of evacuation were overseen by Jacques Jaujard, director of the French National Museums, who protected the artworks (the stories about how the Mona Lisa and "The Raft of the Medusa" were packed and taken away are fascinating).

Towards the end, the history of the Louvre is intertwined with Taniguchi's story: the author faces the grief caused by a personal loss, finally finding the strength to get on with his life.

Published by NBM in a larger hardcover package and in colour, Guardians of the Louvre is an elegant mangaka characterised by intricate details and poetic views and vistas (check out the astonishing architectural renderings) that at times turn each page into a canvas.

This volume is dedicated to art fans, illustrators, and travellers (yes, you could even take it with you on a trip to Paris), but also to all those lost souls who, trapped in the French capital for fashion events such as the current menswear shows, may feel the need to rush away from the superficiality surrounding them in search of something more inspiring that may nourish their minds with beautiful, positive and uplifting thoughts (and if you want a further connection between this artist and fashion, well, a while back Taniguchi did the Louis Vuitton Travel Book about Venice, but that, as they say, is another travel story).

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Posted at 07:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Filmic Forensic Fingertips in Search of a Long-Lost Fashion Identity

The trilogy about travel that started at Prada's runway on Sunday afternoon with a colourful raver-meets-luxury hiker mood and continued on Monday with Gucci's peculiar grown-ups travelling in time loops in extravagantly embellished clothes, closed yesterday morning with Giorgio Armani's collection, entitled "Crossing Borders".

Though he updated his silhouettes to appeal to a younger audience, Armani retained his minimalism, and opted for sensible travellers in unstructured jackets and wide-legged pants in soft fluid fabrics such as silk, linen and cotton. The emphasis on wide trousers and tight cropped jackets (that retained a workwear edge about them) had a bit of a vintage mood that harked back to a Chaplinesque sort of style, more or less forgotten in the age of skinny pants and silly skull shirts.

But while on Giorgio Armani's runway men looked a bit like the luxurious version of Charlie Chaplin's vagabond, on Emporio Armani's another cinematic reference may have been established via the fingerprint T-Shirt that opened the show.

Fingerprint appeared here and there in the collection (that featured functional soft-shoulder jackets and cardigans and a wide range of trousers): at times they were employed in abstract configurations; they were blown up and turned into embroidered versions of the same graphics or formed three-dimensional ribbed motifs on zippered jackets. Armani used them to tackle the theme of identity and individuality from the double points of view of the designer and the wearer.

In this identity game two films came to mind, Wim Wenders' Notebook on Cities and Clothes with that incipit in which the director wondered what is identity ("'Identity' … of a person, of a thing, of a place. 'Identity'. The word itself gives me shivers. It rings of calm, comfort, contentedness. What is it, identity? To know where you belong? To know your self worth? To know who you are? How do you recognise identity? We are creating an image of ourselves, We are attempting to resemble this image…Is that what we call identity?") and the fingerprint shots in Elio Petri's Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto, 1970).

In the film Gian Maria Volonté plays the role of a police inspector who kills his mistress and paradoxically plants clues that lead to him, because he knows he can get away with it, being "above suspicion". The film at the time broke many taboos, exploring the nation's fascist legacy, showing a policeman in the role of a murderer, and dealing with the repressions put into practice by the police force.

In his collection Armani wasn't certainly breaking any taboos, or playing with such themes, though he was maybe trying to react to the current trend for over-embellished and over-decorated pieces that scream "look at me", reshifting the attention towards practical designs that constitute an investment rather than a trend and that can be adopted by men of different ages (compared to designs featured in many of the most pumped up collections out there, mainly geared towards young audiences).

Yet there is an interesting connection between fashion and repression as portrayed in Petri's film: the main character in Indagine is a split personality, a guilty man playing at being innocent, and the fashion industry loves duality and split personalities, after all, it preaches individuality but it essentially prompts people to conform, creating a fascist army.

As Paris menswear starts today it will be the turn of other brands and fashion houses to present their reinvented and revised identities for the next season, though you wonder if, after a reduced and rather weak Milanese menswear week and more earthquakes in the fashion calendars, it wouldn't be better to keep your own identity rather than buying into a fake one suggested by the fashion industry.

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Posted at 04:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Eccentric Tales from Peculiardom: Gucci Men's S/S 2017

The bizarre and at times disquieting images of mysteriously peculiar children in Ransom Riggs' trilogy of books immediately came to mind after the first model strolled down the runway at Gucci. In Rigg's first story, Miss Peregrine's group of little peculiars look like ordinary children, but they are actually grown-ups, elderly people locked in a frozen temporal loop.

The models on Gucci's S/S 17 runway were often dresses in disturbingly childish clothes that included ill-fitting cropped pants, embroidered gilets and shorts matched with knee socks (or lace tights…), sailors jumpers, Donald Duck knits and jelly sandals directly imported from 1980, though remixed here in their luxury version covered with metal studs.

One suit was characterized by a toile de jouy-like print that seemed to replicate not bucolic scenes, but prints of sea snakes, giant crabs and lobsters (and Donald Duck dressed like a pirate…) that looked like one of those fantastic Map of Days Riggs' children leaf through to spot mysterious and unexplored peculiar loops.

This collection was about adventures and travelling, themes recently explored also by Miuccia Prada, but with just one difference: Creative Director Alessandro Michele explained to the media that he hates travelling, though he was referring to physical travel. He indeed favours travelling with his mind, maybe with the help of a book that may liberate his fantasy.

A quote from TS Eliot included in the show notes explained more about the inspirations behind his visual feast: "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

One of Michele's inspirations was Marco Polo's Il Milione, but at times the mixture of references made you think more about Calvino's Invisible Cities, with Marco Polo describing magical places to Chinese ruler Kublai Khan.

Books and fantasy, so that's how Michele conjures up imaginary worlds populated by snakes, bees and butterflies and by fictional characters like his geeks in floral jackets, lost sailors, grown-up childish men clad in pea-green frock coats or red PVC coats like the one donned by the little girl in Roeg's Don't Look Now and rock stars in embroidered jackets and pants spelling in ancient Greek "Serapis", the name of a deity venerated by the Egyptians, the Romans and the Greek (oh bless the Italian grammar schools of the late '80s/early '90s that have taught a generation of people how to confuse those who didn't attend them with simple Latin and Greek words/quotes).

Michele's femmes fatales were clad in Chinese robes, cocconed by furs with intarsia of fantastic monsters or opted for kitsch dresses in motifs that resembled heavily embellished decorative wallpaper or horrid clashing prints from the '70s (of the kind you would spot in your aunt's wardrobe a couple of decade later and that made you wonder if she had a secret life you never knew about...).

Quite often Michele's models wore pajamas and slipper-like shoes almost to highlight that for him the world, rather than being a stage, is a home. This touch of domesticity and these decadent artificial worlds are probably conjured up by Michele in his retreat in Civita di Bagnoregio, a picturesque village outside Rome, that was recently on the Italian news since, perched on top of a mountain peak, it risks of dying and disappearing (it is linked to the rest of the world by a footbridge and you must leave your car at its bottom to reach the village, in a nutshell visiting feels a bit like entering to a time loop…).

Yet just like all the cities Marco Polo describes in Calvino's book are actually different visions of the same place, Michele's designs are more or less new, revamped and remixed versions of the same designs we have seen in previous shows.

Nothing has changed or progressed at Gucci and the designs in this presentation weren't too different from the ones in the Resort 2017 collection, unveiled less than 20 days ago in London at Westminster Abbey.

So Michele may have enriched Gucci's limited vocabulary (based and revolving around its trite logo) with eclecticism and eccentric elements (it seems to be working as sales are up 11.5%), but now he seems caught up in his decorative obsession.

Are Michele's creative tour the force through art, antiquities, interior design, prints, obscure books and maps found in libraries and museums and his thrift-shop galore just fashion gimmicks destined to fade or assume old sepia hues like old photos of peculiar children or will he take new and unexplored directions?

Well, don't expect many changes for the time being (after all, this formula has brought some much needed luck to Gucci...), but to have the final confirmation we will have to wait till the next catwalk show: technically this was Gucci's last stand-alone menswear show as the brand plans to present men's and women's collections together, but in a way it has already done so since Michele opted for a genderless approach in most Gucci's shows he has directed so far.

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